Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.

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Indoctrination Nation

[This is Part III of a five-part essay; if you haven’t yet seen them, first read Part I and Part II.]

While the media generally goes into hysterics every time the Texas State Board of Education meets, with commentators hurling mockery, outrage and vitriol at the board members, there is a total lack of interest when other states’ boards of education meet for the same purpose. Yet Texas is not the only state that influences the content of American schooling: a few other states also determine textbook standards that end up being used in other parts of the country. California, in particular, is also an important textbook market for publishers. Yet mysteriously, one never hears of any controversy erupting when the California State Board of Education meets to decide the content of textbooks used throughout the state and in many other school districts around the country which shun the Texas-approved textbooks.

Why is that? Could it simply be that California-approved textbooks aren’t as politicized as those in Texas?

Quite the contrary. If anything, the textbooks approved by the California State Board of Education are even more politicized than Texas textbooks, and more ideologically biased. So: Why does the media ignore what happens in California textbooks? Because the state’s bias goes the other way. California-approved social studies textbooks are politically correct in the extreme, with multiculturalism and “social justice” as the defining characteristics. The pressure groups and board members setting policy for California’s (and hence a substantial portion of America’s) textbooks exceed their Texan counterparts in their extremism, but since California pushes the “correct” kind of extremism, you never hear about it.

And I’m not just talking about overt political bias, as exemplified by the previously-mentioned A People’s History of the United States and countless similar study materials with a blatant left-leaning slant. I’m talking about a subtler form of indoctrination.